


A Crack in the Storm

by Soroka



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Blood and Injury, Friendship, Gen, Hurt Thor (Marvel), Hurt/Comfort, Male Bonding, Other, Team Bonding, Thor (Marvel) Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Worried Tony Stark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2018-11-09
Packaged: 2019-08-21 06:15:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16571210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soroka/pseuds/Soroka
Summary: In the aftermath of the Battle of Sokovia, Tony finds out that even alien gods can bleed.





	A Crack in the Storm

If someone at their post-victory party had told Tony he’d be blowing up a flying city that weekend, he would have asked for a hook up with their weed dealer.

He has half a mind to get to his own stash, tucked away in a drawer of his nightstand but the temptation is brief. The blissful high would become paranoia, given how much overtime his brain is pulling to process the events of the last couple of hours. A part of him still expects a bastardized member of his Iron Legion to crash through the nearest wall, even though he has shut down all AI-operated systems in Stark Tower and quarantined his workshop. Even FRIDAY is sleeping in a hard drive, locked away from the Internet, until he can personally check no copies of the Ultron protocol remain. He considers splitting the job between him and JARVIS, then remembers his old friend is gone, replaced by a new incarnation that continues to baffle him. When he envisioned true artificial intelligence, he never expected it to be a physical entity, much less, one that could hold its own against any of them.

He swipes a thumb on the lock to his personal floor and lets the door slide shut. His heart dances a mad jig when his phone buzzes in his back pocket. An update from the Stark Relief Foundation slides across the screen, complete with pictures of their set-up. The clear Sokovian sky in them looks oddly unreal, in contrast to the darkness pressing against every window in the tower. 

He skims the text for major hang-ups and breathes a little easier when he learns everything is going according to plan. Another message pops up at the top right corner, this time from Pepper. When he opens it on instinct, a second one follows, punctuated by a disapproving emoji.

_I can see you reading this. Get some rest. We’ll talk tomorrow._

He smiles and texts back a single thumbs-up. Dim, golden light greets him when he turns a corner towards the recreation room, where Clint and Natasha are sprawled on a couch. Their faces bear identical jetlagged expressions and though neither looks comfortable, neither is willing to move. Two mugs of coffee sit on the table they all tried to lift Mjolnir from, still steaming but untouched. Steve’s voice echoes from the small kitchen area, separated from the room by a thick, frosted glass panel. The team seems to have made an unspoken agreement to power through the night and given how wired his own mind feels, Tony is eager to join them.

He lets his body fall into an armchair next to the door. “How’re we doing? Everyone in one piece?”

Natasha lifts her head from the back of the couch and nods lazily. “Close enough,” she says, glancing towards the kitchen. “Our witchy girl is not doing too hot, but she just lost her brother. I’d be on the morose side too.”

A slight, Sokovian accent soon joins Steve’s baritone. Tony’s efforts to understand their conversation are foiled by cutlery rattling in a drawer. “You think she’ll actually stick around? She’s got no HYDRA to go back to, but she wouldn’t have joined Ultron if she was a huge fan of ours.”

A mess of auburn curls falls in front of Natasha’s face when she sits up, letting Clint’s feet rest on her knees. “Steve thinks so and he’s a good judge of character,” she says. “Ten minutes ago, he was teaching her how to use the coffee machine to make hot chocolate. If anyone can get through to her, he can.”

As if on cue, soft laughter floats from behind the glass. Tony’s thoughts swing right back to the dark side. “How do we know she’s not brainwashing him instead? Just because he walked away once, doesn’t mean he’s invulnerable to her powers.”

Brown eyes give him a chiding look. “She’s trying to make amends, Tony. I’m told you know a thing or two about that.”

A quip about Russians holding grudges never makes it past Tony’s lips as he is reminded of HYDRA’s files on the twins and his role in their parents’ death. There are times when he wonders if he has enough years ahead of him to atone for the sins of his past. He wonders now if Ultron has made that task impossible.

“Fair enough,” he says. “Any news of Bruce?”

Natasha’s lips press into a tight line. She throws a cursory glance at the phone, then puts it away, dejected. “Maria’s team is sweeping every corner of the planet. They still can’t find him or the Quinjet. It’s like he vanished from the face of the Earth.”

Tony leans back, hands weaved behind his head. “Bruce is good at the disappearing act when he wants to be left alone. Trust me, he just needs some time to himself. He hasn’t had much of a chance to digest what happened in Johannesburg.”

“He knows it wasn’t his fault.” Heartbreak ripples across her voice. “He also knows he can talk to us about it.”

There’s a slight inflection around the word ‘us’ that tugs at the corner of Tony’s mouth. “Maybe it’s better this way,” he says. “I doubt he would be comfortable sharing the tower with our new guest. Last time they stood next to each other there was talk of choking.” A question surfaces abruptly in his worn-out mind, like a child startled out of slumber. “Has anyone seen Thor?”

Clint, who has been dozing in and out of the conversation, turns towards him. Gray eyes blink away the veil of sleep. “I thought he came back with you.”

Tony shakes his head. “We were supposed to rendezvous in the woods outside the city. He never showed up. I tried to contact him but the blast that vaporized Sokovia also fried his comm.” He straightens up in the armchair. “Are you seriously telling me no one checked if we were missing a god of thunder?”

Clint yawns and drags a coffee mug towards himself with two fingers. “You said it yourself, the blast fried the comms. It wasn’t an ideal situation for a roll call.” He engineers a careful sip, then gingerly moves the drink back to the table. “I wouldn’t fret about him. If Sokovia actually ended up crashing into Earth, he’d be the only one left standing.”

“I’d rather not test that theory any time soon.” Tony pulls up the tower logs on his phone, scrolling through the team’s comings and goings. “His ID doesn’t show up in the system, but these records only go back twenty-four hours. And there’s no way to synch them up until everything is back online.” He catches Clint’s unnerved look and pulls himself back to his feet. “I’ll go check upstairs. Wouldn’t want to misplace both of our nukes on the same day.”

* * *

At some point in their transient residence in the tower, everyone had begun referring to Thor’s private floor as ‘upstairs’.

For a building that rises twenty-three stories high, the name is a stretch. It is indeed the topmost floor, laid out in a wide U-shape, with skylights instead of windows and additional grounding around every cable. On clear summer days, it looks like a glazed terrace that draws in every drop of sun and smells perpetually of morning dew. In winter, it becomes its own dimension of light and warmth, a small oasis amidst the raging elements, where the nights don’t feel so long. At least, not until Tony finds himself explaining to Thor and Steve that yes, there were prequels to Star Wars and no, they aren’t watching those.

When he steps out of the elevator, he finds the main door wide open.

A trail of muddy footprints on the polished concrete suggests their owner has entered the tower through the Quinjet landing pad. The lock panel on the wall glows a washed-out blue, under more flecks of mud. Tony leans down to inspect it and grumbles at the obvious design flaw. The residue caked on the surface has created its own copy of a fingerprint permanently attached to it, which caused the mechanism to lock in place.

He knocks as loud as he can on the edge of the door. His only answer is the distant sound of running water.

He follows the muddy trail inside, groping his way through the darkness. The light is on in the living room, where a human palm has left another clumsy print on the switch. A gust of cold air slithers across his feet through an open balcony door. When Tony walks over to close it, he spots combat boots slumped against the railing, watered by rain.

“Point Break! Is that you?” He knocks on a curved corridor leading to the bedroom. There’s a long, coarse shade of dirt on it, as if something heavy has slid down the wall. He raises his voice. “Hey, are you alive in there?”

There’s no reply but the sound of running water stops. A door creaks open somewhere ahead and the air smells of steam and soap. Thor walks towards him barefoot, still half-tangled in a frayed Led Zeppelin t-shirt. Ropes of wet hair fall around a towel twisted behind his neck, dripping water over old jeans. He cracks a tired smile at the sight of Tony.

“I have a very sore shoulder that says I am.” He points at twin gauze strips across Tony’s eyebrow. “What about you?”

Tony shrugs, not knowing if it’s leftover adrenaline that keeps him going or just pure stubbornness. “I know I never want to see a meteor shower that close again. But I have five layers of a patented metal alloy to keep me snug as a bug.” He rubs his stiff neck, making a mental note to add a couple more. “What happened to you? When did you get back?”

Thor walks past him into the brightly lit living room and frowns at the midnight creeping behind the balcony door. “I don’t remember,” he admits. “I fell in the water, got caught in the debris and the current dragged me away. By the time I managed to free myself, the helicarrier was gone so I returned to the tower.” A shadow crosses his face. “Did everyone make it out?”

Tony heaves a long, pregnant sigh. “The speedster of the twins is dead. Got pumped full of lead shielding Clint and a kid. His sister is not taking it well.”

He doesn’t expect the storm that drifts over the blue eyes nor the somber tone. “I suppose she isn’t,” Thor replies. “She may have twisted our minds but I know her pain all too well. She has my condolences.” He fiddles with a knot at the back of his head and trails off, when he notices Tony’s look. “What’s wrong?”

Tony is only half-listening now. He drifts the moment he sees vivid crimson drip from Thor’s fingers. It lands in irregular flecks on the linen rug, where it finally catches his attention.

Thor slides the towel from his shoulders and lets it unravel in his grasp. He stares blankly at a large bloodstain spreading into a gruesome Rorschach test across the white surface. “Oh—”

Tony feels an uncontainable urge to slam a hand over his face. “Really? That’s all you got?”

Clouded eyes narrow as Thor reaches out to inspect the back of his head. “Something must have hit me before I fell in the lake,” he mutters. “Or after.”

The unusually quiet tone is troubling enough for Tony’s mind to change gears from exasperation to concern. “You think?” he groans and pulls Thor’s hand away. “Stop that! Sit down and let me take a look.”

He drags the god of thunder to the couch, with an ease that does nothing do allay his mounting fears. His alarm meter jumps a notch higher when he carefully separates strands of hair and reaches a knotted mess encrusted in dried blood that is already beginning to disintegrate from the water. A deep wound gapes at him from underneath, running in a jagged, diagonal gash from the top of Thor’s head to nearly the nape of his neck. Whatever frail protection the scabbed tissue offered crumbles like wet clay, and soon, the faint scent of soap is drowned out by another unmistakable metallic smell.

He swears when a thick stream of fresh blood flows over his fingers. In a heart-sinking moment, Tony understands how massive the hemorrhage must have already been to coagulate into the unholy abomination he destroyed. The thought makes him feel slightly ill, as he yanks the towel from a limp hand.

“Jesus H. Christ, how were you walking around?” He presses down on the wound and feels sickening warmth soak into the fabric. “Forget that, how the hell didn’t you notice you were bleeding like a stuck pig?” Thor’s attempt to turn around is quickly thwarted. “Don’t move, you’re making it worse.”

There’s another half-hearted struggle before Thor settles down. “I’ll be alright, it’s all just capillary.” He seems to pick up on the skepticism building up behind him and elaborates, “Shallow head injuries bleed a lot. They tend to look much worse than they are. This is a bad papercut, nothing more.”

“I know what capillary means.” Tony rolls his eyes as he finds himself drifting back into exasperation. “I don’t know what kind of paper you have in Asgard, but here on Earth, this needs stitches.” He is halfway through standing up when his mind throws a checklist at him. “You don’t feel nauseous, do you?”

The blond head shakes under his hand. “No.”

“No headache? Room’s not spinning?”

“No and no.” Short, fatigued laughter escapes Thor’s chest. “I never took you for the worrying type.”

“And I never took you for an idiot who wouldn’t notice a crater in his head.” Tony grabs a calloused hand and clasps it firmly over the towel. “Stay put and keep the pressure on. I’ll be back.”

* * *

When Tony returns, five minutes later, he’s walking a lot faster.

He is only half-relieved to find the god of thunder in the same spot he left him. Thor sits in an uncharacteristic slouch, as if the weight of his own body is becoming a burden. He doesn’t even notice he has company until Tony sits next to him and gently moves his hand away. The hemorrhage has lessened significantly in the time he has been gone but given how heavy the towel feels when he sets it aside, he knows it’s only good news in the loosest meaning of the word.

He reaches out to tap a bloodstained shoulder. “Hey, you still with me?”

Thor gives him a slow, grateful nod. “I appreciate your concern, Stark, but it will take a lot more to end my life. A young dragon on Muspelheim tried very hard to bite me in half once. I still have the scar.”

The reassurance is wasted on Tony as he snaps on latex gloves. “That’s great, but completely irrelevant to you bleeding out on my watch.” He pours a long stream of disinfectant over the wound and pulls a pair of tweezers out of their packaging. “On a thousand-dollar couch, no less. For being royalty, you’ve got no regard for the finer things in life.”

Thor doesn’t reply and Tony doesn’t prod him further. He unrolls a strip of gauze on a clean towel and regards its contents with mild apprehension. Around a hundred surgical staples lie arranged on the thin sterile surface, each bearing a silicone head the size of a cherry pit. For Stark Industries’ first foray into the medical field, it is a modest project. The first prototype reached him a week ago and went thoroughly ignored after the HYDRA Research Base was located. It has never been Tony’s intention to test it on his teammates, but as far as precision goes, he trusts nanotechnology better than frustratingly fallible human hands.

Unfortunately, at this stage, human hands are still an unavoidable part of the equation.

He picks one up by its head and carefully grips the tweezers with this other hand. He steadies his grip, pulls a section of the jagged cut closed and places the staple around the torn edges.

“Hold still,” he says, “This is probably going to hurt.”

With a short squeeze, the silicone head comes away from the staple, which begins to sink into the skin, sealing it shut. If it does hurt, Tony never finds out, not even after he places down the second staple, the fifth or the seventh. Every once in a while, Thor’s muscles will tense and a shiver will run down his back, but eventually, he stops reacting at all. It is not until the fifteenth staple starts making his way over the wound when he speaks again.

“I’m sorry.”

For the second time, Tony stares at him in confusion, prompting Thor to read his mind. “I mean about my outburst at the lab. It was uncalled for.”

Tony shrugs at the memory, which feels as distant as the party itself. “Yeah well, I’m sorry I created a robot who tried to kill us. Mistakes were made on both sides. Now sit still before I place one of these on a nerve.” He flicks a strand of hair out of the way of the tweezers. “So, where did you go while we were crashing at Clint’s place? You were a bit intense when you came back.”

Thor’s fingers drum a steady rhythm on the couch. Tony is sure he’ll be left in the dark, but instead, he learns about a secret cave under the Trollheimen mountains, about ancient beings that see through time and space and the dangerous tribute they collect for their gifts. He remembers seeing Erik Selvig’s name in the HQ communication logs, before the team set off for Sokovia, and wonders if he had called to check up on Thor. Or to yell at him, like Tony is inclined to do right now.

A sober voice at the back of his head reminds him he should be the last person on Earth to condemn Thor’s self-destructive impulse. He’d give a good chunk of his own soul for a glimpse into the future.

Still, he asks, “And that was worth risking your life for?”

“It was.” The answer bears no hint of hesitation. “The Infinity Stones have been missing since the dawn of time and now three of them resurface in such close succession? I doubt that’s a coincidence. Something or someone is drawing them out. The sooner we know who, the sooner we can start fighting back.”

There’s a gravity to his voice which only exacerbates Tony’s pessimism, so he decides to take a page out of Steve’s book. “Then we will track them down and wreck them together,” he says. “Hopefully when your head isn’t cracked like a melon.” He hovers a staple over a particularly hard to reach spot. “You know, just because everyone thinks you’re indestructible doesn’t mean you have to believe that.”

“I don’t. No indestructible being could feel this tired right now.” Glassy eyes blink slowly when Thor lies down, his body almost melting into the couch. “So how’s Vision holding up?”

“Fine, I guess. I can’t figure him out yet.” Tony flashes back to a vibranium hand crushing the head of an Ultron bot like paper and hopes they never get on each other’s bad side. “I don’t even know if he dreams of electric sheep. Or if he dreams at all.”

A smile peeks from under the blond mane strewn over a leather cushion. “He’s a noble soul, Stark. If anyone has to be the permanent custodian of the Mind Stone, I’m glad it’s him.”

“He is nice enough. Bit naive but nice.” Tony chews on his lip, as he considers his greatest exercise in irony to date. “Funny how it all turned out, huh? I spend two years creating an AI that would protect the planet and it tries to smash it with a rock, the first chance it gets. Then you show up, give it a zap from Mjolnir and suddenly it wants to save it. Raises a lot of uncomfortable questions for me.” He sighs, briefly mourning the loss of Helen Cho’s cradle and adds, “Like the fact that he technically has one mom and three dads.”

Blue eyes drift towards the hammer hanging on an adorned steel hook embedded into the wall. Thor lets silence hang between them, before giving him a meaningful look through stands of messy hair. “Mjolnir has nothing to do with it. Vision’s mind is a mirror of JARVIS and JARVIS loved this world so much, he pieced himself back together to fight for it. If he is your child, I’d say he’s a worthy successor.”

When Tony regains his voice, after a solid minute, he can only chuckle, “So does that mean you’re giving up custody?”

Thor pauses, as if genuinely considering his offer. “I would rather not,” he replies. “I don’t have much family left. It’s nice to know there are more of them around now.”

If the painful tug in Tony’s stomach reflects on his face, it goes unnoticed as he turns around to pick up the last staple. He thinks of his own parents, of the sleepless nights that followed the car crash and of the familiar sorrow that haunted Thor’s face after he returned to the tower. They had all offered their condolences on his mother’s death, but struggled to do the same with Loki’s. Thor himself seemed to understand that, dwelling very little on the matter, and throwing himself headlong into finding the Chitauri Scepter. The word ‘closure’ burns across Tony’s mind as he moves aside a dark lock, braided firmly into the blond hair. He may never find his heart breaking over the person who unleashed an alien army on New York, but he is willing to make an exception for his grieving brother.

At some point, between their raids of HYDRA bases, he probably should have told him that.

He leans away, at a loss for words again, except for the most practical ones. “Stitches are done,” he says. “They will recede on their own as the wound heals. Wouldn’t hurt if you took it easy until then. Your great, big, cosmic mystery can wait that long. Plus, our Healthcare Division will kill me if you make off with half their prototype.”

He doesn’t get a reply, so pulls off the gloves and continues. “They based it on an old Egyptian technique, of all things. Apparently, back then, they would put ant pincers around cuts and tear the poor bastards’ heads off.” He snickers and gathers the supplies back into the bag at his feet. “The plan was to donate these to the New York Surgical Society after testing. So unless they come alive tomorrow and try to rip your scalp out, I’d say they are good to go.”

He frowns at the lengthening silence. When he turns around, he is met with closed eyes and deep, even breathing. “Point Break?” he calls out softly. “Thor?”

“Tony?”

The question is paired with a subtle knock. He looks up to find Steve standing in the hallway, takeaway menu in hand. His eyebrows knit together when he catches on to the lingering smell of antiseptic. “Is everything alright?”

Tony shakes his head as he takes a final look at the stitched up wound. Satisfied with the result, he snatches a blanket from the top of the couch and drags it over the still form next to him.

“Not really,” he says. “People keep falling asleep around me. Here I thought I had a winning personality.”

Steve lets out a laugh that sounds as jetlagged as he looks. “Does your winning personality want a beer?”

Tony peers down at the blood drying on his fingers. What remains of the day weighs heavily on him when he replies, “I think I need something stronger than that.”

**Author's Note:**

> I was supposed to write the wrap-up for Future Imperfect. Instead I wrote this because I'm weak for the After Action Patch Up trope and you'll take my Ironthunder BROTP from my cold, dead hands.
> 
> As always, if you liked it, author says put a review on it.


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